Nuisance
by Mia316
Summary: Flack wasn't a fan of the new girl." Long oneshot, Season 2. FM Radio if you squint.


**Title: **Nuisance

**Summary: **"Flack wasn't a fan of the new girl."

**Disclaimer:** The names of all characters, and most of the scenarios contained herein are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS and Alliance Atlantis. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.

**Rating**: T

**A/N**: My take on Flack and Lindsay through Season 2. Spoilers for pretty much all of S2, but especially from "Cool Hunter" and "Stealing Home". This went longer than I expected it to.

* * *

Flack wasn't a fan of the new girl.

He couldn't tell you why; he barely knew why himself. He'd seen her around the lab before, but only once had she ever made an impression. She'd smelled of lavender and tiger crap, so of course he had to stare. She had met his stare for less than a second before she'd rolled her eyes a little and ducked into the locker rooms without another word.

Aiden would never have been so passive-aggressive.

And then he didn't stop hearing about her, even before she lost Danny twenty bucks by actually eating his creepy bug dinner. Stella wouldn't shut up about her. You'd think Monroe was her long-lost baby sister. _Danny_ wouldn't shut up about her. You'd think he'd found a new crush. It was demonstrations this and country-girl that. "She's really cute, really funny – just meet her, you'll like her." Dr. Hawkes' exact words.

Come to think of it, maybe he _could_ say why he wasn't a fan.

It wasn't personal, though, so Flack tried to remember that as he watched Monroe arrive at the scene. Just because he didn't think being able to chow down on wasp tamales meant she'd last long as a cop in New York, didn't mean he shouldn't be nice. Flack knew it troubled Danny when he and Flack didn't agree on something. And it bothered Flack when Danny was troubled.

Monroe spared him a brief smile in greeting as she approached. "Detective Flack."

He grunted, before trying harder. "Detective Monroe. Is Mac with you?"

He had to ask twice; she was distracted and seemed to have forgotten his existence. Apparently, water towers were the new hot thing.

"Uh, no – he called me, told me to meet him out here. I think he's coming from the lab." She set her crime scene kit down, before crouching next to the water tower that still housed Stacy Avida's body.

Flack nodded. "Great."

He briefed her on the case. Monroe nodded absently, paying far more attention to the river of blood running out of the tower's tap. Flack tried not to take it personally. If Danny was going to be stupid over _another_ girl who was just going to hurt him – and while Flack doubted that Danny had more than a passing interest in Monroe, it was still a risk – it might help for Flack to be friends with said girl. If only so his revenge would be that much better.

"Did you know that the total amount of water in the body of an average adult is 37 litres?" she asked.

Flack blinked.

At his silence, she continued. "I know water towers hold much more than that, but it's kinda weird, knowing that a whole lot of this—" she gestured to the bloody water—"is coming directly from her body."

"Right."

Thankfully, it wasn't long after this that Mac arrived. The silence had started to stretch to the point of awkward. Flack noticed that Monroe paid a lot more attention to the briefing he gave Mac. Smart girl.

He could see how people might find her really cute. He had to remind himself that he was trying to like her, though, when she started going on about the Graveline Tours. For a minute, he could almost see where Officer Murphy's irritation with the new girl was coming from. Did she have to be so…_different_? She was so obviously out-of-town, out of place in the city… and then there was all that pointless trivia.

But Murphy was a douche. The guy would rag on "Dorothy" to the other guys at the house for weeks, after only one or two run-ins with her. Monroe might be grating, but the kid didn't deserve that, and Flack definitely wasn't going to be that guy.

He didn't like her – as cheerful and talkative as she was, there was an aloof quality to her. An entire morning together spent processing the water tower and the vic's apartment, and Flack felt like he hadn't learned a single thing about her. It made him wary. He didn't trust people he couldn't learn a thing about. But when he failed to make himself like her, he at least tried not to let on that he wasn't a fan.

As it turned out, that didn't work either.

* * *

"_So, I'm taking our Doctor Zimmerman to lock-up," Flack told Monroe when she finally caught up to him; it was only when she'd shown up at his desk that he realized he'd ditched her in the interrogation room. She didn't seem too happy about it. But surprisingly, it wasn't a rebuke that greeted him when she spoke. At least, not on that front._

"_You're not going to wait to check out his alibi?"_

_Surprise had him studying her expression before he even realized it. Monroe looked unsettled, as though they had missed something._

"_You're seriously thinking he didn't do it?" She'd held up well in the interrogation. The tough exterior as she'd laid out the evidence against the doc, had almost had Flack rethinking her ability to last in the NYPD. He knew it was too good to be true._

"_I think that something's not adding up." She met his gaze squarely. "Zimmerman's not displaying any classic signs of guilt. He didn't get rid of anything that could incriminate him – didn't throw away his shoes, didn't replace the stained glass – he hasn't even called a lawyer yet. Wouldn't that be the first thing you'd do if you were facing heat like this from the cops?"_

"_Not if I was guilty. Maybe the guy just knows we have him."_

"_So why does he keep insisting that he's not guilty?"_

"_Well, maybe he's just a moron, then. Look, Monroe, Mac told me you were looking into all the other suspicious deaths in Zimmerman's building."_

_She frowned, her earnestness dropping a few notches. "What does that have to do with anything?"_

"_I'm saying that the department doesn't believe in curses, so you need to stick to the _murder_ we can actually pin on someone today."_

_At her flush, he almost regretted his tone, if not his words. But she didn't give him a chance to take either back._

"_I actually want to make sure we pin it on the right someone."_

_Flack almost glared. "So do I."_

_There was a tense silence before she spoke up again. "You realize that if his alibi checks out he'll be free to go, anyway? He looks good for this now, but really our entire case is circumstantial. A defense attorney will just argue that someone's framing him."_

_She was right, much as Flack hated to admit it. He clenched his jaw, thinking. He hated locking up the wrong guy even more. "We can still hold him on drug charges, abusing his practice and all that," he said. "The charges will stick until you guys come up with something more concrete."_

"_Fine." Her dark eyes were hard, but that could've been out of determination. She turned on her heel and was about to leave, but then paused and faced him again. "And by the way, I was looking into the other deaths because, like Mac says, everything's connected."_

_Flack was willing to bet she'd been that girl in school who was always the first to raise her hand and hung out with the teachers after class. It was harder this time not to roll his eyes. "Do you have any proof of that in this case?"_

"_I will."_

"_Well, when you do, let me know." Flack began searching around his desk for Zimmerman's file, rapidly losing interest in the conversation. _

"_You'll be the first."_

_He watched her through narrowed eyes as she left, seemingly swallowed up by a crowd of uniformed officers who were entering the precinct at the same time. Almost all of them were more than twice her size. There was _no way_ she was going to last._

_Of course, she'd turned out to be right about Zimmerman, and as promised, Flack had been among the first to know. Not that he'd actually seen her after that encounter. He'd simply arrived at his desk later that day to find an "I-told-you-so" Post-It note left on top:_ Stacy Avida blamed Dr. Z for her daughter's death, so she framed him for her own. 1—2—3. Call Mac for details. LM.

_Flack had to laugh._

* * *

It was weeks before they exchanged anything more than cursory nods in the lab corridors. He still heard about her occasionally; mostly through Danny now, depending on which new experiment Monroe insisted on trying out on him. Danny seemed to like her a lot. It made Flack wonder, but he wasn't too worried. He'd had one-night-stands that lasted longer than the majority of Danny's crushes, and indeed Messer already seemed to be getting over this one. The way he talked about Monroe lately reminded Flack of the way he himself used to talk about Sam. Before the alcohol, and everything else that had happened because of the alcohol.

Flack was glad. He didn't think he was ever going to be a fan of Monroe's. But Danny hadn't picked up on that, and maybe now he didn't ever have to know.

The phone-sex story had been pretty funny, though. He'd given her props for that.

And she might be annoying, but he'd also give her props for being decent. He'd seen the look on her face as the team watched Mac take Danny's badge and gun, after his old cigarette had been found in the grave in the Giants' Stadium. In that moment, she'd been the most vividly expressive person Flack had ever met, guilt and pain warring on her features before she caught him watching. It was like a window had slammed shut – her huge brown eyes had gone cool and veiled before he could even blink. She'd turned her back on the painful scene in front of them and left.

Two days after she'd seemingly dropped off the map, Flack asked Mac why he hadn't seen her around. Only to find out she'd been suspended for a week for slipping Danny the DNA results on the cigarette, rather than bringing them to Mac first.

He definitely didn't like cops who broke the rules. But … well, if he'd been told to point to a cop most likely to break them, Goody-Two-Shoes Monroe would not have been his first pick. She wasn't ever going to be Aiden, but she seemed to have Danny's back, and that made her alright in his book.

For that reason alone, he made an extra effort to be nice the next time they landed a case together.

Or he tried to, anyway. He didn't know if he'd just caught her on a bad day, but she didn't even crack a smile when, after being briefed by Mac on the mermaid case, he came to find her in the lab.

He knocked on the glass door before entering. "Where are we on the mermaid, Monroe?"

A far cry from her cheery demeanour on their first case, she eyed him warily before sealing something into a plastic evidence bag. "Finding and talking to Paul White," she told him. "Do you know where KLME Incorporate is?"

"I can find out."

"Great," she replied, stripping off her gloves. He studied her for a moment, confused by her cold attitude. In no way was he an expert on Monroe-isms, but she couldn't have changed _that_ much in the weeks since they'd last worked together.

"Any particular reason we're looking for him?" he asked.

She held up the sealed evidence bag to reveal the KLME cheque within; and at least now she was smiling. Even if it was more of a smirk. "Our vic had a pretty big payday tucked inside her bra, and it's signed by him."

"Nice."

She barely said a word on the ride over to the company – not even a hint of pointless trivia – and only acknowledged his existence when they went in to interview Paul White. When she came close to snapping at the guy for no apparent reason, Flack started to wonder if the problem wasn't just with him. When he tried to ask, though, he didn't get an answer.

"How soon can we get the warrant for Paul White's boat?" she asked instead.

He lifted a brow, but didn't press it. Monroe's issues were none of his business. "I'll put the call in now, but it probably won't come through until tomorrow."

Her visible unhappiness had him softening a little. Vulnerability was weird on Monroe. She looked enough like Strawberry Shortcake without losing the reserved edge that usually belied her appearance (so well it was actually scary). Whatever her problem was, it seemed to be taking a lot out of her.

"I can also put a tail on him," he added, "in case he tries to clean up the boat before we get to it. We can't do much more than that. And I think you're off the clock, anyway."

"Yeah." She checked her watch. "I guess I'm headed home, then."

"Want a ride?" He was, after all, making the effort.

The look she gave him was…not hostile, exactly, but definitely suspicious. He suddenly felt like a suspect who was trying to sell her a story.

"It's fine, I have to make another stop anyway." She gestured to the subway stop just down the street.

Flack smirked. "Don't want me knowing where you live, Monroe?"

He could tell by the dimple in her cheek that she'd almost smiled; she wasn't half as good as she thought she was at hiding her emotions. "Not bad for the first guess, Detective."

He snorted. "Here; if you're not headed back to the lab, I'll at least take you badge back for you."

"Oh, right." She unclipped it from her belt and handed it over. "Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow."

It was only when he'd left her badge in her desk back in the crime lab, that Flack realized it was the friendliest exchange they'd ever had.

* * *

He found out from Danny later that Sara Butler was from Montana. Of course. So he gave Monroe the pass on her attitude; but when she snapped at him over arresting James Vackner in front of Danny, he couldn't let that go. Dammit, he knew how to do his job. And now it was clear that her issue _was_ his business, if said issue was with him.

She vanished after the interrogation with Vackner, and Flack couldn't track her down until long after Vackner had been sent off to Rikers'. He finally found her in the locker rooms of the crime lab.

"Monroe, we need to talk."

He might've startled her when he came through the door, judging from the way she whirled to face him, dropping her badge in the process. She covered it well – merely stooped to pick up the badge and slip it into her coat pocket like nothing was wrong.

"Sure, what's up?"

"What's your problem with me?"

She looked impatient. "Excuse me?"

Flack crossed his arms, growing more irritated by the second. "You're really going to pretend you have no idea what I'm talking about?" he said scornfully. "Monroe, we're both grown-ups – start acting like one. If you have a beef with me, get it off your chest now – but I _would_ like to point out that I've been nothing but nice to you—"

Her expression only flickered for a second, but he just _knew_ she'd been about to laugh; and not in a good way. He frowned. "What? You don't think I have?"

"I don't think about you," she replied coolly.

The frown turned into a glare, before he shook his head dismissively. "You know what, forget this." He turned to leave. "I figured we could talk this out like adults, but…"

He was almost at the door when she spoke again. "Flack, wait. I'm sorry. It's not you."

He contemplated ditching her anyway. But he _had_ searched her out for a reason. While he didn't give a damn what Monroe thought of him personally, they did have to work together on occasion. And the team was going through enough as it was, between Stella and Danny's brother. They didn't need him and Monroe picking fights with each other on top of everything else.

She was speaking again by the time he'd turned around, his brow lifted expectantly.

"At least, it's not you – specifically." She wasn't meeting his eyes as she explained; which was a first, now that he thought about it. "It's this last case— it's actually a lot of things, really, not just you—"

"But it's me at least a little bit?" he interrupted coldly.

She let out a huff of breath, before meeting his gaze again. "Yes it is. I'll get over it," she said determinedly. "But I _am_ sorry if I've been taking things out on you lately."

It was hardly the best apology he'd ever received, but she already looked anxious enough as it was.

"Alright," he said.

"Okay."

They eyed each other with mutual wariness, before she stepped past him to get to the exit. He frowned.

"Wait – you're not going to leave your badge in your locker?"

He watched her freeze. "I always take it home with me," she replied.

His eyes narrowed. "No you don't," he said, at the same time she seemed to remember how quickly he'd spot the lie. "What are you up to?"

She sighed again, casting a quick, furtive glance around the locker rooms. There was no one else inside but them. Not surprising for this time of night.

"Listen…you don't like me very much, right?" she asked.

At his raised eyebrows, she continued hurriedly. "No, it's fine – I mean, I'm not exactly a fan of yours either—" she paused when his brow furrowed in offense.

"Are you going somewhere with this?" he demanded.

She blinked slowly, as though collecting herself. "My point," she said, her eyes harder than he'd ever seen them, "is that you're the one most likely to let me walk out of here and not care what I'm doing with my badge, so long as it's not illegal, or against department policy. And it's not. So if you could just…" She gestured to the door.

Flack let out an incredulous laugh. "Whoa. You're really not making your case here, Monroe."

She bit her lip, frustrated. She was getting easier to read. "Please?"

Truth be told, he probably would've let her go, if that vulnerable look wasn't back on her face. It made him nervous. "You're definitely not walking out of here until I know what's going on."

Monroe suddenly seemed to find the ground incredibly interesting. "I need to know why."

* * *

So he drove her out to the Island – he just couldn't let Strawberry Shortcake wander across the city to visit a criminal in Rikers, in the middle of the night on her own. It'd feel like he was aiding and abetting a crime. Flack was fairly sure Monroe could take care of herself – he'd heard enough stories of her taking down suspects, and after nearly a year he didn't completely doubt her ability to last in New York – but she didn't look up to taking down anything tonight. She'd already admitted that she didn't know exactly where Rikers' Island was; she had planned to get directions from the NYPD's computer database.

Flack didn't try to talk her out of meeting with Vackner. He did tell her that it wasn't her job to know _why_ a perp killed someone, but he could tell from the moment he said it that someone had already told her that. Most likely Mac – she probably wouldn't have made it to the locker room alone if Danny had been the one to pick up on her obsession. It hadn't mattered when Mac said it, and Flack knew it wouldn't matter when he did, either. Monroe's desire for answers wasn't so much to know every detail of the case, as it was to know how it could've been prevented. How she could avoid the same fate. Flack got it. He'd been there. And he also knew there was no point in telling her she wasn't going to get the answers she wanted. It was a lesson that would only stick through experience.

They only covered one subject on the drive to the prison complex. It was bugging Flack too much not to speak up about it.

"What makes you think I don't like you?" He thought he'd covered his bases so well.

"Well you don't, do you?" she replied.

He couldn't answer that. At his silence she just nodded, a hint of a smile on her face. "Like I said, it's fine, I can take it. It's just, I can _tell_ you don't, so you shouldn't really be surprised if I have a problem with you over it."

He shrugged. Fair enough.

She went on a few minutes later. "If it helps, it's pretty much the only problem I have with you at this point."

He tore his eyes from the road to glance at her. She was staring out the window and mostly hidden in shadow. But he thought she might still be smiling. "I used to think you were just like Murphy – you know, old-school NYPD, only native New Yorkers allowed…"

When Flack choked a little at the comparison, she actually laughed. It was the first time he'd heard that; she had a nice laugh. "I mean, I don't think that anymore – I doubt Danny and Stella would like you half so much if you were anything like Murphy, and neither of them ever shut up about you…literally, I keep hearing about what a 'great guy' you are, and neither of them ever lie, so…"

Flack chuckled, shaking his head. "Go figure," he muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He could hear her fingers tapping out a nervous beat on the seat's armrest.

"You're being a real gentleman with this – driving me to Rikers, I mean, I _did_ tell you I could get there on my own – so I know for a fact you're not a bad guy—"

He smirked. "Think this is the most I've ever heard you talk about yourself, Monroe."

She sighed. "I talk when I'm nervous."

They crossed the Francis Buono Bridge into Rikers Island, and she fell silent. After he'd parked the department car and shut off the engine, he turned to her. He could see the gleam of her large eyes through the dark; he thought she might be scared, judging from how wide they were, but she didn't say anything. It was clear she was too busy summoning her nerve.

"Sure you're up for this?" he asked softly.

Monroe exhaled slowly, then met his gaze. "Yeah, I am. Don't go anywhere, though, okay?"

"And here I was planning to head back to the mainland, maybe swing through the drive-thru at Mickey D's…"

"Cute." She snorted, but he caught the reluctant grin as she slipped out the door. Barely looking old enough to be out alone this late, her stride was nevertheless confident as she headed toward the entrance.

He'd been expecting to wait a while. He'd tuned the car radio to that night's coverage of the Knicks game and had even pushed his seat back – but less than twenty minutes later, Monroe was storming back toward the car. The set of her shoulders was tense, her tiny frame seemingly folding in on itself. It wasn't cold enough outside for her to be all huddled up like that. Flack sighed gently, unlocking the doors so she could get back in.

He let her stare silently at the dashboard for a short while, before he asked. "Okay?"'

Her eyes closed, and she took a deep breath. "No," she said quietly, tucking her hair behind her ear. "But I need to get out of here."

Flack drove. They were making their way back through Queens when he finally decided to break the silence. "Monroe, you know that scumbags like Vackner—"

"Look, I'm not—" She cut him off, before pausing and softening her tone. "I'm not an idiot, Flack. I wasn't expecting to get a straight answer out of him, I know how these guys work. But I did want to get _some_ kind of answer, even just to hear what he had to say about her."

"What did he say?" Flack asked carefully.

"Nothing," she bit out. "The bastard didn't say one thing. He didn't tell me why he'd chosen Sara – he didn't tell me _anything._"

Flack winced. Monroe seemed to deflate in her chair, struggling to compose herself.

"Did you know she was from Montana?" she asked after a long pause.

"Yeah."

She shook her head. "And she was Jane Doe for almost a full day...might've been longer, if she hadn't been ID-ed by a _customer_, since everyone she cared about was apparently out west…"

"Monroe." Flack took one hand off the steering wheel and gripped her shoulder to get her attention. She was going down a dangerous path. "Hey. We got the guy. That's what you gotta hold on to, that he's never going to be able to hurt anyone else again."

"Yeah," she whispered, still looking troubled.

He rubbed her shoulder and continued, unable to resist. "Okay— hold onto that, and to the fact that quite a few good members of the NYPD would _definitely_ be able to ID you if you ever turned up as Jane Doe."

"Oh my god, Flack." She buried her face in her hands. He grinned openly when he heard her muffled chuckles. She straightened and raked an agitated hand through her curls. "Not what I needed to hear, but I guess I should probably say thanks," she mumbled.

"You need to snap out of it," he told her gently, keeping an eye on her even as he navigated the streets. "You can't be thinking about the what-ifs…you shouldn't even be thinking about the whys, really, because that's the sort of thinking that can drown you." He paused. "And you've lasted this long on the force – be kind of a shame if you burned out now. You shouldn't have gone there tonight."

She sighed. "That'd be the 'I told you so', I'm guessing."

"I didn't tell you so. Didn't think you'd listen."

"I probably wouldn't have, but I could tell you wanted to say it anyway. If it helps, I could find you a Post-It…?"

He snickered. "Just had to say it, didn't you? Anyway," by now they had reached Manhattan. "Wanna give me your address this time? So I can drop you off."

"Actually," she hesitated, "do you think you could leave me at Joe's instead?"

He recognized the name of the sports bar in midtown Manhattan, and frowned. "You meeting someone there?"

"No."

He cut her a quick glare. "I'm not dropping you off in a bar so you can drink alone, Monroe. Aren't you working tomorrow, anyway?"

"On-call only." She shifted in her seat so that she was facing him as directly as was possible with her seatbelt still on. "Flack, listen, I really appreciate everything you've done tonight, and I'm paying attention to what you said about not thinking of the what-ifs. But I've got these images in my head, and I know myself. I'm not going to be able to sleep without a louder distraction than my own TV, at least for a little while. I go there all the time, anyway."

He eyed her, considering, before coming to a decision. "Alright." He made a sharp turn and they drove back the way they'd come."

"Flack, what – where are we going?"

He didn't answer until they'd parked in the garage of an apartment complex less than fifteen minutes away.

"Okay," Monroe said slowly, following his lead as he got out of the car. "Where the hell are we?"

"My place." He grinned at her, before retrieving his bag from the trunk. "It fills all your requirements – you get a loud TV, plus me as company—"

"I didn't ask for that," she said hastily.

He ignored that. "We can order take-out, watch the highlights from the Knicks game; if you still feel the need to knock back a couple beers, we can do that too – it'll be distracting."

Monroe looked ready to run. "Flack, wait, I'll just tell you where my place is. Really, it's not that far from here."

He sighed. "Look, it's after midnight. I know you haven't lived here long, but I'd think today's case would make you think twice about being on the streets this late, never mind intoxicated." When she paled slightly, he took her shoulders with both hands, making her meet his gaze dead-on. "Just so we're clear, you know I didn't say that to be rude, right? It's just the truth."

"Yeah, I know, but…" she said dazedly, almost squirming with uneasiness. "You don't think this is going to get even a _little_ awkward?"

He shrugged. "Think of it as a rite of passage," he suggested, leading her up to the stairwell. "I've officially had every member of the team crash at my place at least once."

"I'm not good with slumber parties – haven't had one of those in forever."

He glared lightly. "Lucky for us this isn't a slumber party, then, right?"

"Oh no?" she said, amused, and at least now she was starting to seem a little more relaxed. "Sub the Knicks highlights for chick flicks, and you could be one of my girlfriends from the fifth grade."

* * *

She left her shoes next to the door as soon as she'd entered – Flack couldn't remember the last person who'd done that in his place. Then she stood awkwardly by and glanced around at his apartment as he made up a bed for her on the couch. Deciding to wait out her discomfort rather than address it, he flipped on the tv before heading into his tiny kitchen for the take-out menus and the promised beers. "Guinness okay?" he called, snatching two chilled bottles from the fridge.

She gave him a small grin. "Good taste."

"Thanks."

They settled on the couch together, and he flipped the channel to ESPN.

"So…who was the last one on the team to crash here?" she asked, prying open her bottle with ease and taking a long sip.

"That'd be Danny Messer. I believe you know him?" He glanced at her to gauge her reaction.

She gave a quiet huff of laughter. "You really don't need to do the whole 'don't hurt him or I'll have to kill you and dump the body' thing, Flack." She stared up at him with huge eyes that for once were completely open and guileless. He was willing to bet she didn't often drop her walls in front of people. "Cute as it is to finally be getting that speech from a guy, I wouldn't ever go there with Danny."

Flack couldn't say he wasn't relieved, but he had to wonder. "Why not?" Maybe he was being overly-defensive, but she could do a lot worse than Messer.

Her fingers nervously shredded the label on her bottle of Guinness. "It's not like I haven't ever considered it, but…he gets attached. Really easily."

"Yeah." He nodded.

"See, I don't. Get attached, I mean."

Flack's brow lifted. "Not ever?"

Her laugh was shaky. "I try not to. I got attached today with just the case, and I still feel like I'm losing my mind. How people can stand feeling like this constantly, I have no idea. And these last few weeks, with Stella and Frankie and Danny and Louie…"

He considered his answer carefully, because hers had just explained a hell of a lot about her. Like why, for all that the team adored her, not even Stella or Danny could give him any_ real _info about her aside from her being "cute", "sweet", "funny", "fond of experiments". She wouldn't let them in. He did wonder why a perky, girl-next-door type from the Midwest had ever felt the need to cultivate a detachment that rivalled even Mac's poker face…but somehow, he doubted he was going to get that out of her tonight.

"Maybe this doesn't have to be the constant fight you're making it out to be," he said after a while. "Even in our line of work, getting attached isn't such a bad thing."

She met his stare with curiosity. "You handle it well. I mean, from what I've seen you stay detached from the cases, but you're…really good with the team."

Flack shrugged, taking a long sip of his beer. "The team's amazing."

Monroe snickered. "They are rock stars." She pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees. "I didn't ever plan on becoming friends with coworkers when I first got here. I figured it wouldn't even be an issue."

"Why? Were you going on some negative stereotype of New Yorkers, Monroe?"

Her lips twitched mischievously at his mock offense. "Yeah, I don't know where I got the idea that it might be true."

He gave her balled-up form a gentle shove, and she took the opportunity to nick one of the take-out menus from his pocket.

"Ooh, Thai! Haven't had that in a while, let's do that." She half-leaned against his arm as she leaned forward, placing her empty beer on the coffee table.

"See, New Yorkers are friendly," Flack said lightly. "Find me one other place in the world where your coworkers let you feel them up."

She punched his arm with surprising strength as he laughed. "You know, I like you, and then you open your mouth," she complained, but he saw the smile she was unsuccessfully trying to suppress.

The game highlights went on in the background as she retrieved her phone and a pen from her bag. He had to admit he was only half paying attention to the TV, more interested in watching her multitask, perusing the menu as she dialled the number to the Thai place. She was incredibly precise in her movements, considering she'd just downed a beer in a short amount of time. It was …interesting, though a little weird.

Monroe handed him the menu and the pen while she placed her order; he circled what he wanted and she placed his, too. When she hung up he leaned forward intently, catching her gaze and holding it.

"Monroe, listen to me. It's one thing to shut out the perps. It's good, even, so you don't let them get inside your head. But take it from me – you start doing the same to the people you spend most of your day with, and you can't do your job. A huge part of the job is trusting them – you shut them out, you've got nothing. "

His soft tone dampened the harshness of the words, and he suspected that was the only reason her eyes still held his, rather than shutting down completely. She bit her lip.

"Speaking from experience?" she asked after a while.

He smiled a little. "Let's say I've been on your end of this talk before. We really are working with a great team."

* * *

She'd returned his smile with a small one of her own, but changed the subject, and he could only wonder if he'd gotten through to her. He thought he might have. She had eased up a lot more in his presence. After she'd finished her second beer of the night, he had learned that she was kind of a lightweight, and that she worked a lot harder to hide her Midwestern accent when she was sober. (It was cute, so he wondered why she bothered hiding it at all – but apparently his uncontrolled amusement when he first heard it was all the reason she needed.) When he'd offered her an old Giants' jersey of his to sleep in, they'd gotten into this long conversation where he learned she liked football more than basketball, and baseball more than the other two. He'd learned that night that she took up quite a bit of space for a tiny person when she slept – they'd both passed out on the couch, and he'd woken up the next morning all but pinned to the couch, because she'd been draped across most of his body.

A few weeks later, when they'd found Aiden's body…Monroe was more awkward than ever, but Flack thought he saw her make an effort to lend the team silent support. She didn't turn down the invitation to attend the team's final toast of Aiden. She listened to Danny's endless stories about her predecessor, even after the rest of them no longer could without breaking down; because Danny needed someone to listen.

Flack found himself hoping Monroe would last – she wasn't such a blank slate anymore.

But she could still be such a nuisance.

* * *

"_It's quite a shindig."_

"_Sunday block parties. Springtime in New York City."_

"_Right in the middle of the street, huh?"_

"_Where do they have 'em in Montana?"_

"…_Wyoming."_

_He couldn't help but grin._

END.


End file.
